


Bad Company

by brodylover



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Deaf Character, Deaf Dean Winchester, Helpless, Hurt/Comfort, Torture, Wings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-17
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-17 19:12:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2320334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brodylover/pseuds/brodylover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Cas were on a demon hunt when they got jumped by far more demons than they'd expected, leading to their capture. Cas gets his wings clipped and the pain of it deafens Dean. With Cas trying to heal even though he's lost all of his Grace and Dean unable to hear a single thing, they have to do whatever they can to keep away from the demons still hunting them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Company

“Do you know what happens when an angel gets its wings clipped?” the demon smirked, twirling the angel blade in his hand.   
Dean squirmed, trying to get out of his bonds, but his hands were secured tightly over his head. Everything was off kilter, just a bit off, the concussion he’d received making everything distant and airy. Still, he could see Cas, pale and barely moving, just his chest heaving, blood dripping from his nose and from the gash in his side. He was positioned, just like Dean was, arms tied above his head.   
“I’ve always been curious.” The demon, Mammon or something, continued, this time taking the angel blade to Cas’ flawless skin.   
Dean barely had time to call out, to try to get the demon to stop, but he didn’t care. He was carving, light strokes, just enough to draw blood, not enough to kill. Still, the gashes bled blue light, grace leaking out through the thin slits. He was carving a sigil in Cas’s chest, one that Dean didn’t know, and it was far more intricate than a ward or seal. Cas shook and tried to pull away, eyes finally opening just a crack, but he was too weak to get too far.   
There was no flash of grace, no rapturous moment that blinded Dean, when the sigil was complete. Cas’ wings were just there, as if they had always been there. Dean had never seen an angel’s wings before, just the shadows and soot of them. Cas’ were beautiful in a way, but twisted and damaged from time. Mammon must have thought so too, for he took a step back and just looked for a while. They were the color of dust, the edges goldenrod. Dean had expected them to be black, like Cas’ hair, or blue, like his eyes or Grace, but that was silly. Those things weren’t Cas, they were his vessel. These were far more interesting, curved and heavy, they half stretched out and half hung to rest on the ground around him, shaped much like that of a barn owl.   
Cas woke more fully when the matted and disorganized feathers were grabbed, Mammon’s fingers dark and hard as he gripped them, pulled them forward. Cas gasped and winced, the wounds in his torso flaring.   
“What happens when I clip your wings?” Mammon asked and Cas pulled away, as if his breath was rank.  
“Don’t.” Cas murmured, not answering the question. Words were echoing in Dean’s head, jarring him, but Cas’s voice was quiet, fearful.   
But he didn’t listen and Cas started to scream as he sliced through the length of the feathers, the primaries. Cas was fully awake now, pulling away so hard that the feathers that Mammon held were pulled out, revealing white skin underneath. But Mammon grabbed him again, pulled the wing out, and continued to cut through the thick feathers with the angel blade.   
“Don’t!” Cas was screaming, and his voice was loud, shrill, more than human vocal chords should have been capable of. “Please! No! Don’t do this!”  
Dean was screaming as well, but it was ignored just as easily. He wanted Mammon to stop. He had to stop him, had to make Cas okay. He had to save his angel.   
“Stop! You son of a bitch! You leave him alone or I swear I’m going to rip you into tiny little pieces before you can even make it back to Hell!”  
Mammon paused, just for a moment, to chuckle. “Son of a bitch? You use that term so often, Dean, I highly doubt you even know what it means.”  
“It means that the moment I get to you, you’re going to wish you’d killed me before you even lay a finger on that angel.”  
Mammon shrugged at that, not even bothered by Dean’s threats, and went back to cutting. Dean resumed his shouting and threats and demands, Cas his begging and squirming.  
Dean closed his eyes, grit his teeth, when Mammon swept his arm upward, cut the feathers higher, making Cas’s screams become nothing more than angelic power, so high that Dean couldn’t hear it, all of the windows in the warehouse they’d been brought to shattering around them. Dean couldn’t cover his ears, but he could feel the hot blood drip from them as his eardrums burst.   
Cas was still screaming when Dean opened his eyes next, but he couldn’t make out words, hear it, or sense anything about the angel’s sounds. He couldn’t hear a thing.   
The feathers were still being cut, but they were being cut shorter now, and Dean could see why Cas had screamed so much. Mammon was cutting too short, the feathers bleeding down the shafts. Cas was quaking and trying to rip himself out of the demon’s hold, his wrists bleeding from the rope digging into his skin. He didn’t mind it though, just kept screaming and trying to tear himself away.   
When one wing was done, both primaries and secondaries bleeding, Mammon paused, pulling himself close to Cas’s face, licking his blood off of the blade. He seemed to be asking Cas something, in the moment that he could actually hear, not screaming. Cas was dripping with sweat, his chest heaving so hard that Dean could see his ribs from across the room. Dean knew that he was still crying out, still trying to stop Mammon, but he didn’t know what he was saying or if he was just making noise. He couldn’t even hear his own words. Cas was crying though, tears mixing with sweat and all of his muscles were twitching without his control.   
Whatever Mammon was offering, Cas must have decided against it, although with how his body tensed and his screams started up again, the blade slicing through his other wing, Dean didn’t know why. He knew that he would have broken, if he’d been given the opportunity. He would have broken for Cas, would have done what he could to set Cas free.   
He was pulling and he could almost hear, more from memory than anything, else, as one arm popped out of its socket before the other. It didn’t loosen the binding on his wrists, but he pulled further anyway, not caring about the damage he was causing himself. He had to get to Cas. He had to stop this. He had to save him.   
There were no feathers on the ground. Dean had been focusing so much on Cas, on the pain that he was facing, that he hadn’t noticed before. There was soot where the tips had landed, but no feathers. Every piece that Mammon cut away burned, just as if an angel had died.   
Mammon was done though, blood everywhere, no more feather’s to clip. If he cut further, he would just be cutting the wings off, and he didn’t want to do that. He was conducting an experiment. The last thing he cut was the rope holding Cas up and the angel fell to the ground, too weak to even stand. Dean felt heat on his face and he noticed that he was crying, sobbing, at the state of his friend, at the fact that there was nothing that he could do to help.   
Mammon stood back and watched as Cas struggled, tried to pull himself up, wings fluttering strong as ever but without the length and shape to fly around him. Every movement splattered blood and each drop had a moment where it glowed blue with dripping Grace. Dean’s stomach went hard as he understood; saw how Cas was bleeding Grace more than blood. He’d be out of Grace soon, be stuck weak and human and vulnerable.   
Dean slumped, as much as he could, and he didn’t know why he was still begging but, he was. The demon was just standing there, not doing anything besides laughing at Cas as he tried to stand up, as he tried to do anything. He was speaking, taunting Cas, eliciting a glare from the broken angel, and Dean wished he could hear it, if only to give a nasty retort.   
After a while, Mammon must have grown bored for he grabbed Cas by the hair and pulled him up into a standing position. Cas was whining, brows a not, tears and sweat and blood still dripping. Mammon turned the angel blade one more time and then jabbed it deep into Cas’s gut, ignoring Dean’s bellowing.   
Cas’s eyes went wide and blue, Grace shining in them. A ball of it shined in his fallen open mouth. Dean couldn’t stop screaming, pulling against the ropes. He knew what this was. This was the death of an angel.   
Cas didn’t pull away from the blade buried in him though, didn’t fall to the ground with his wings burning, even as the feathers that remained around him started to smolder. Instead he reached out, long elegant fingers touching Mammon’s cheeks. It was a soft motion, and for a moment it looked like Cas would kiss the demon, but then his body seized and a flood of neon erupted from his flesh.   
Dean barely had time to shut his eyes before the blinding glow of the last of Cas’s Grace claimed his eyes. He could still feel it burn at his eyelids and when it faded and he opened his eyes, he was blind for a moment, the room dark in comparison of that all consuming brightness. It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust and when they did he sighed with relief.   
Cas was alive. That burst of Grace wasn’t the end of his life, just the end of his Grace. He was on the ground, bleeding and sputtering, but alive. Mammon was gone. There wasn’t even a pile of ash from his body burning away. Cas had just removed him from existed.   
Cas coughed, a mouthful of blood splattering the cement floor and he asked Dean something but Dean could do nothing but shake his head, unable to hear him.   
The angel, weak and barely able to even move, shouldn’t have been moving, started to drag himself towards Dean. His elbows moving, one after another, the radius of his wings pulling him forward. He was slow and his legs were trying to help, but with the blade still buried deep in his side, he couldn’t move quickly, just gasped and clung and pulled himself as best he could.   
Dean wept at the sight of him. He was supposed to be so strong. He was supposed to be so mighty. And here he was, dying, and still trying to make it to Dean.   
It was his wings that ended up helping him to his feet. He couldn’t fly, but he flapped them as if he could, and it helped to move him as he pushed up with his arms. He leaned against the wall behind Dean though, not strong enough to keep standing and Dean turned to keep an eye on him. He couldn’t take an eye off of him, not now. If Cas was going to leave him, he was going to be there for it. He wouldn’t ignore Cas in his last moments.   
The angel’s hands were at his gut, one gripped with white knuckles around the blade. He gritted his teeth and pulled, the blade coming out with a spurt of blood, a mass of it spilling down Cas’s front, staining his torn apart shirt more than the sigil had already done, soaking into his over coat. He coughed more, blood dribbling down his chin.   
His eyes kept closing, each time for longer than the last. Still, he leaned forward until his face was in Dean’s shoulder blades, causing pain in Dean’s dislocated shoulders and bloody wrists. Cas was reaching up though, with the blade still coated in his blood, and sawed through the rope hoisting Dean up.   
Without that support they both fell forward, Dean’s body keeping Cas from colliding with the cement. Dean didn’t have much movement in his arms, and every attempt hurt, but he shifted anyway, pulled himself out from under the angel. Like this he could see Cas’s wings easier, see how damaged they had been even before Mammon had carved them up. There were feathers missing and large bald spots, tangled and all matter of things lodged in between muscles and feathers. That didn’t matter though, not now.   
Dean turned Cas so that he was on his back, pressed one knee into his gut to apply pressure to the wound, apologized as the angel grit his teeth in the pain of the sharp pressure.   
Dean’s hands though, as much as he could use them, were fighting with his pocket, trying to pull out his phone. It took too long for him to pull it out and then he dropped it onto Cas’s heaving chest, less strong than it had been, not quite strong enough to get enough air.   
He could barely even call Sam, kept him on speaker phone. He gave their location, or, where he thought they were, but his GPS was on so Sam could find them. He told him to bring as much first aid as he could.   
When he hung up he didn’t stop speaking. He just kept talking to Cas. He didn’t know what he was saying, he didn’t care. He couldn’t hear it regardless. He just kept talking and Cas’s face softened, his features warming even as he spat up more blood. His friend was dying but there was no way that he wasn’t going to be there for him.


End file.
